


Heart Sick

by EryiScrye (SomberSecrets)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Modern AU, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I guess it’s my time, I’m in a mood, a goodness to honest post-lady stoneheart au, but I wanted that heart monitor dammit, probably could have been canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27668945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomberSecrets/pseuds/EryiScrye
Summary: They knew each other too well. That was the only explanation for how she had managed to convince him to leave her, as broken and bandaged and ill as she looked.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 64
Kudos: 175





	Heart Sick

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to lewispanda for betaing!

Jaime drifts between beats, his consciousness rising and falling with the drum of her heart. It wasn’t sleep, but it was better than the endless _eternal_ cry of death.

Her hand is on his stump, fingers curled, not in a tight grip, but a grip nonetheless. At first he held her hand, but she would just lie limp, and although the sensations that crackled down his arm were unfamiliar – no one had touched his stump since… – and almost painful – the result of scar tissue and bone and severed nerves, they had explained to him once – it didn’t matter because she was still holding on.

She breathes.

He breathes.

His dreams are brief. Fragmented.

But they all scream.

 _Live_.

* * *

They knew each other too well. That was the only explanation for how she had managed to convince him to leave her, as broken and bandaged and ill as she looked.

“I’m sorry I had to take you so far from your men,” she told him after a day and a night travelling, “But I had to be sure.”

He reiterated the only question he’d been asking since he’d laid eyes on her again, “Who did this to you?”

“There’s a traitor in your camp.”

His remaining fingers flexed as he resisted the urge to touch her face, his undamaged hand on her undamaged cheek. “Who did this to you?”

“If I hadn’t stolen you away they would have killed him. And he’s only a boy.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and the dirty bandage covering her cheek drank with desperation.

His gaze flickered over her face. “Who are they? Who is he?”

“Your men are in danger, but you can root out the harm.”

His breath seized in his throat. She spoke of her boy, and he had his as well. Boys _and_ girls, children who still frolicked so freely in the snow, children who trusted him to keep them safe. She knew him too well. “Come back with me.”

She shook her head, “I can’t.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“My boy.”

“Two days and you’ll have my army at your back.” She would have him too, but he only had his one off hand.

She shook her head, “Two days and he’ll be dead.”

His hand clenched around his tags. “I swear I will find you again.”

She gave him a sad smile.

* * *

Tom of Sevenstreams’ expression morphed from one of surprise to one of terror at Jaime’s return. Already his ranks were in disarray. He supposed no more would have been needed but his disappearance and the sweet, caustic words of a clever fool.

However, Tom’s terror turned into delight, as Jaime demanded he lead them to where the Brotherhood camped. For one day, one excruciating _long_ day, the man stayed silent, but then, with the rising of the second day’s sun, he sang like a bird.

A pit, unfathomable and wide, grew in Jaime’s stomach.

He left Addam in charge of the better part of his army and led a large, skilled party into the forest toward this Hollow Hill. Three days behind, three days… no _two_ days travel.

He would find her.

* * *

They found the boy first.

“Please,” he cried, tumbling into their path, “You must help her.”

As the medic treated his wounds - some fresh and shallow, others deep and still not so old - the boy told them all he knew. “The Ravens and the Wolves descended just as she set me free, it looked as though they had been planning to attack the Brotherhood for some time and, and…” the boy sniffled and fat tears ran down his face and dribbled off his chin.

Jaime could hear his teeth grind. The Brotherhood was all whom he had accounted for in choosing his retrieval party. He hadn’t realized that a turf war had started between the three rebel groups, much less that two of them seemed to have formed an alliance. “And Brienne?”

The boy hiccupped, “She told me to run to safety, to find you,” he rubbed his eyes and began to sob, “And I did.”

But she was _his_ protector.

“Take Podrick back to the camp so he can properly recover,” Jaime told the medic. His soldier nodded and made preparations to turn back.

The rest of them forged on without another moment’s delay.

* * *

There was no other way to describe it other than a massacre. Bodies strewn this way and that, but there was only one which he cared about. “A six foot tall woman, blonde hair, blue eyes,” Gods, he hoped that they were still _clear_ blue eyes, “Freckled and long limbed, and broader than…” but she wasn’t broader than him, not anymore, malnourished as she had been but four days ago. “Bandage on her face, broken arm. You can’t mistake her.”

He had recognized her immediately despite the years apart, despite all of the ways that she had changed. Had he changed so much too? No. He had stepped on coals during their time apart, but she had gone through hellfire.

In the end, he was the one that found her, clutching a set of old dog tags that were not her own, beside the body of a woman he had thought long dead.

He was scared that when he touched her she would be cold.

Instead she was burning hot.

Hellfire indeed.

Jaime scrambled to peel the bandage off her face.

The _smell_.

He would never forget that _smell_.

The smell of his decaying hand waving him into the dark, his stump festering as heat had attempted to consume him. And it would have claimed him too… if not for her.

He would never forget that putrid scent of death.

* * *

The closest field hospital was on the Quiet Isle. His medics had done all they could, but it hadn’t been enough, so they had had to move her. Between her injuries and the severity of the infection, it was nothing but a waiting game now.

The doctors on the island tried to keep him out. “Family only.”

“I am her husband.” He had called her his wife once. It was only right. “Check her tags, she has one of mine.”

Now he sat by her side, dreaming that she would live.

“Jaime?”

He was awake faster than a shot. His hand fluttered over her brow, “I’m here.”

Brienne tossed, “Jaime?”

His eyebrows furrowed; other than her acknowledgement of his presence she didn’t otherwise seem awake.

“She calls for you in her sleep.”

He turned to the door, “Podrick.”

The boy quivered, “They said you sent for me.”

“I thought…” He looked over at Brienne. In the next moment Podrick was by his side, sobbing into her sheets.

“Thank you,” the boy eventually managed to hiccup through his tears, “I couldn’t not know.”

“She… she calls for me?”

Podrick looked up at him, “When she’s lonely or scared.”

Jaime swallowed deeply and once again smoothed the hair around her temples behind her ears, “I’m here. Gods, I hear you.”

* * *

Love is agony. This Jaime knows.

All his life he has only loved one woman and she had caused him agony.

“Jaime...”

“I’m here.”

“Come back for me.”

“I have.”

But this is how he knows he loves her.

How he knows that for the rest of his life he will only love her.

Because waiting for her to wake up, not knowing if she will... is agony.

* * *

When her grip around his stump loosens, he falls in his dream, and wakes up gasping. “Brienne!”

He expects the screech, unending, the sound of his heart tearing out of his chest.

Instead…

It’s a soft murmur, “Sorry.”

He must look nearly wild, staring at the calm of her blue. “Your…” He can’t even begin to describe what he is feeling.

“Water,” she rasps.

Jaime scrambles to his feet.

* * *

Neither of them are small people, but he wedges himself onto her hospital bed anyways and lies beside her now. She curls around him, her head on his shoulder, her healing cheek turned towards the sun.

If there had still been doubts that he was her husband before, no one doubts now, though the lie is still the same.

He resolves it won’t be a lie for long.

She’s sleeping again, still not able to spend more than half her day awake, but she is alive. He can feel her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, the gentle puffs of her breath on his chin, the rhythmic beat of her heart.

He has found her.

And he won’t leave her again.

She breathes.

He breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you also to Nire who encouraged me to be the rudest version of myself and brainstormed that the dog tags Jaime and Brienne carry are one of his and one of hers. The dog tags are Oathkeeper, ya'll. Take your feelings up with her, I surely did.


End file.
